HEBRON, Israeli bulldozers today uprooted dozens of fruitful trees in Beit Ummar town, north of Hebron, according to local sources.

Mohammad Awad, a media activist, said that Israeli forces used a bulldozer to razed a five-donum plot of land planted with over 130 trees belonging to the Ba‘ran and Sabarna families to make room for the expansion of the encroaching nearby colonial settlement of Karmei Tzur.

He added that the Palestinian landowners have title deeds proving their ownership of the plot, which in fenced in the colonial settlement.

There are over 700,000 Israeli settlers living in colonial settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in violation of international law.

The number of settlers has almost tripled since the Oslo Accords of 1993, when settlers’ number estimated 252,000. Illegal colonial settlements have leapt from 144 to 515 in that time.

Israel’s nation-state law that passed last July stated that building and strengthening settlements as a “national interest.”

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency